Child and Grandchild Move Across the Country

I haven't posted in over a year. It has been a very busy year. A couple of months ago our oldest child and her husband decided to move their family to over 1000 miles away. At that time, granddaughter and I began making plans to build her a fairy garden she and I had seen on one of our adventures. Husband and I are not rich in any way, shape, or form and fairy gardens are not cheap. So granddaughter and I started picking out what kind of fairy garden she wanted and the things she wanted in it. Slowly but surely, I was able to obtain and take delivery on it all.

The past 2 weeks daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter have been living at son-in-law's mother's house but they allowed our grand-dog to spend the entire time with us with only 1 visit scheduled with granddaughter. Grand-dog has spent time with us before when they went on vacations and he does love spending time with us. He has spent most of his life with us on and off so he is very used to our lifestyle and snuggling and playing with us.

A week ago I get an evite to a going away party being held in honor of my daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter being given at son-in-law's mother's home where they have been living. Since we had 2 family reunions that same weekend and she is known to schedule things without permission of the kids, I called her to see if the kids knew about this. She said yes and were helping plan it but it was only going to be immediate families only. Yeah nope - didn't happen. Should have put money on that one - very easy bet. She is known to go way overboard and yesterday's party was a perfect example. It went from immediate family only to about 50 people (all friends or relatives of theirs). I almost didn't go but it would be the last time I got to see my grandchild. So I went.

So back to the fairy garden - everything has been in for over 2 weeks and I have been trying to get daughter to commit to a date I could have granddaughter for a few hours to put it all together. All I was asking for was a mere 3-4 hours. Yesterday when arranging time today with son-in-law's mother, son-in-law said not one thing more is going in his car and definitely not a fairy garden.

So here I sit with all the fixings for the fairy garden. I have no idea what to say to granddaughter on why she can't take it with her - I can't very well tell her that her father is a douche. So I said well, I can do it when I watch her when you come back for daughter's best friend's wedding. Ummm well I learned plans changed and they never told me. I am no longer watching granddaughter for the wedding since they decided to not bring her. Instead they are flying the other grandmother out to their new house to watch granddaughter and grand-dog. Glad I asked. Glad to know that I no longer had to save my own anniversary weekend for something I was not going to be able to do and this was decided 2 weeks ago and no one bothered telling me.

Truthfully I wanted to just ship it all out to granddaughter and let her put it all together but I can't - this was something we were going to share together. I want us to do it together. I have tickets scheduled for a visit in October. I guess I can lug everything out there and do it then. But again. What do I tell granddaughter who knows we were supposed to do it today? Oops - you can put it together but then not touch it again for over 3 months? Who would do that to a child? I can't.

Hopefully I get to see them before they leave. Knowing son-in-law, he will come get grand-dog at 6:00am and leave without us even knowing. The only time I have ever been away from my daughter is when she went to college or got married and moved in with her husband but they were only 30 minutes away. Did we ever encroach on their time or show up uninvited? Nope. Had that done to me by my inlaws so would never ever do it to my own kids.

Meanwhile, I pray granddaughter never finds out the type of person her father really is and that my daughter wakes up and realizes him for what he is doing to her and their daughter. He is moving them to an area where only his friends are and none of daughter's. I can only hope and pray they survive.

How Not To Be Father of the Year

If anyone actually reads this blog they know I have problems with my family. Pretty much always have and understand I always will. I also recognize that my mother kept us together acting like a family and when she died that died with her.

I have always been the scapegoat of the family, the black sheep, the one who chose to be who I am and not who they want me to be. I am a person with my own ideas and values. I do not believe in going to a family function where I am not invited. Maybe that is old fashioned but when I only find out about the function after it has happened, you will not get a gift. Don't expect one.

As I said. I understand who I am and I accept who I am. My siblings and I are divided. I accept that. There are 6 of us. Two of us )my baby sister and I) get along great. My brother and 2 of my sisters get along and hang together and dictate everything from what we are eating when we get together to when we get together to who gets invited, etc. The middle sister alternates between the 2 groups trying to be the peacemaker. My father is of no use even though he is remarried. The woman who married my father never had children so she has absolutely no clue but tends to side with the one group (not my baby sis or me).

My father gets on my case if I haven't been to a family function even though I might not have ever known about it. I can tell him that but I am a liar because he has been told I was notified or invited. Last week I walked into my granddaughter's 4th birthday party and he and his wife were there. They were at the end of a long picnic table so it took me a while to reach it. According to him that was wrong because I should have acknowledged him first. Tough.

I was invited to go to lunch with my father and his wife and 2 of my sisters for Father's Day. Well, I have always given the honor of choosing what we do to my husband. He chose instead to go for a final walk through of his parent's house with his brother and his mother then visit his father's grave then we would come home and have dinner. We had a great day doing this although it was a little sad for him to say good-by to the house he spent almost 21 years in and his father built. At the end of the evening, I called my father to wish him a Happy Father's Day. Not even saying thank you, he immediately launched into me for not attending his lunch and then proceeded to tell me that I looked like I had gained 100 pounds. Well, I haven't, I wore a top that day that I have been unable to wear for over 2 years. I was kind of proud of that. I stated I had not gained any weight but had been losing but it really wasn't any of his business. I went on to say that it might look like I have since I was growing my hair out so the length is currently almost shoulder length so tends to fatten the face instead of being short and above my ears. Oh he wasn't finished. He went on to say I haven't colored my hair and it looked like shit. I told him that I was 63 and therefore have gray and white sprinkled with brown and blonde and that I have not ever colored my hair. What he might have seen was our well water was filled with a lot of rust from iron pipes 400 some feet down. We replaced the iron with PVC over 2 years ago so I no longer have mineral or rust buildup in my hair. He said I was lying.

I said well, birth father, Happy Father's Day!

I then went to attend to a real father - my husband!

Family Gift Exchanges

I don't know how other families work it but in our family there is a family gift exchange. We used to separate the kids from the adults. Let me note here there are 44 in the family now. The original 6 of us siblings plus 5 spouses. Then there is my father and his wife. Next is 23 grandkids with their spouses, and finally the 8 great grandkids. Quite a group now.

We only see each other twice a year - once at Christmas and the other mid-summer for a weekend. Back to Christmas. So as I said before we used to separate the kids from the adults and had 2 exchanges until the number of adults exceeded the number of kids under 18 so we decided to put all the names into a hat and do a total exchange. When my mother was alive she handled this and our limit was set at $25.00. Yes one could go over by a little but no more than $5.00 max. If you found a bargain and the price ended up to be $15 instead of $25.00 that was fine as long as the price of the gift was $25.00.

My mother passed away in 2010. Much has changed. I wanted to keep it the same price because I felt this was a 'side' gift and should never trump what was spent by either a parent or grandparent. Nope, didn't have a say in this! Actually it was voted on without my knowledge. I didn't approve. I had seen gift prices creeping up over the years and the problem was the kids were excited to get certain people's names but not mine because I spent what was pre-determined. Then I noticed a pattern. Gift prices were up to $50-$100 and the same people got the same people. With 44 of us, how is that possible to continuously get the same people without cheating. Once I drew a 10 year old's name and she went to her mother and I ended up with who her mother had and the kid got one of the people who spends the $100.00.

Now I spend a max of $100 per child and our grandchild. Period. I don't feel the gift giving/opening presents should encompass an all day thing and in our family it does. Each person opens their present in age order and we all ohhh and ahhhh over it then it is on to the next person. Do that 44 times and you have added 4 hours to the day. Now add a full turkey and ham dinner and dishes and prep and you have another 4 hours. Way too long to have any time to interact between other members of the family that live in other states.

I am so tired of the crap going on in the family that I had already taken my name out of the drawing. My sister and her family did too. Part of her family made it to dinner. Our daughter went but the rest of us were all sick with the flu so we didn't go. Have no idea what went on but guess the person who married my father basically said she didn't want his kids in HER house anymore. Ummm.....she lives there since she is married to my father. But that house is already in trust to us kids. It is not her house. I heard she changed locks (my dad didn't even know about it and was pissed when he found out).

But I think we are retiring to Colorado and never coming back after my husband's mother passes. There is nothing here left for me anymore. Even our kids want to move there. Gift exchanges? Nope not doing it.

Family - Blood vs Those You Choose

Every single time I call my father or talk to 5 out of 6 of my siblings, I wonder why I bother. Today was no different.

Before my mother died I actually tried to have very little contact with my father. I was my mom's POA and I would drive down in the mornings just to help her with her bath or getting dressed or do things for her - things she didn't want my father to do for her. I should also say my mother was the glue that somehow melded all of us different people together. She was our rock - the person each of us turned to - the person who was the only parent who was always there for us - the person who we all would call and let know what was going on in our lives and she in turn passed the information around to the rest of us.

But she passed away and the family fell apart. I question at times whether or not we were really a family in the truest sense of the word to begin with because we all should be there for each other especially in hard times. But no, not my family. My baby sister and I stayed in each other's lives. My brother and 2 other sisters were deep in each other's lives. The middle sister alternated between the split family, still trying to be the peacemaker and take over for my mother.

My father? He started telling strange tales about how he was a part of some secret group of the government and had been for a long time. As oldest I questioned this because if he had this secret job, there sure was no money in said job. We were dirt poor. My mother took in ironing for people and between my mom, me, and the next oldest sister, we would iron for 2-4 hours every night. My mother never really learned to cook so most cleaning and cooking responsibilities were left to me the oldest. My father was never around although him saying it was because of this secret job is a bit much. He read water meters or worked construction or odd jobs or as a short order cook when not teaching.

Although he wasn't physically around most of the time, when he was, it was his way or the highway, no questions asked. He was a tyrannical, narcissistic, angry, physically and emotionally abusive man. It was how he was raised. It was how he raised us. He was an alcoholic on top of that. My mother left him once and he vowed to her to quit the drinking and so we went back. The drinking might have stopped but nothing else did. I think the last time he physically laid a hand on me was when I was 22. I had walked out at age 18 and didn't go back home until I was 22. Ironically I did something (who knows what besides exist) that set him off and he erupted. I think I looked at him square in the eye and said you are never to do that again or I will call the cops. I left.

As I said, I was rarely around my father without my mother around. She intervened. But without her physically here anymore, my relationship with my father deteriorated just a few days after she died. I couldn't seem to be able to do anything right and I took the cowardice way out and just left. I returned for the funeral.

Within 6 months my father took off his wedding ring and began dating. 6 months later he found what he said was the true love of his life. He married her 2 years after my mother's death. At first, she seemed okay. She made my father happy. At the time I found it kind of ironic that a woman who was a widower herself but she never had children would marry a man with 6 children plus 6 spouses, 19 grandchildren, and 3 great grandchildren. For someone who never wanted a family, she sure married into one.

But I digress. She met us in spurts but twice a year we all get together or used to. She seemed to ruin that too. She couldn't tolerate any noise or any kids crying or playing and she couldn't tolerate anyone helping her in the kitchen yet she couldn't handle cooking for us either. So instead of joining in, she would retire to her room and never speak to anyone. This worked. We still managed to get along although the continental divide was drifting further and further apart.

It has now been 6 years since my mother's death and 4 years since my father's remarriage. The peacemaker sister let on last week that my father was having Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas at the house we grew up in. So I called to see if he had tried to call me. Ummmmm no he had not. In the background, his wife was yelling at him, saying if that was me then she wasn't invited and to just hang up. I did it for him. I said goodbye and hung up.

No more family for me. Instead it will be family that is of my heart not my blood. People I choose to allow in my life. This has been a long time coming. Interesting enough, I feel light and more at peace than ever before.

Good bye toxic people who are blood related. Hello friends who are more family to me than my blood family ever thought of being.

The Latest Rage: GoFundMe Accounts

According to Wikipedia: GoFundMe is a crowdfunding platform that allows people to raise money for events ranging from life events such as celebrations and graduations to challenging circumstances like accidents and illnesses.

All I know is there is a GoFundMe account set up for just about anything and everything. Yesterday before it was taken down, there was actually an account set up for a person suspected of murder and was on the run when he was in a shootout in OK.

People are asking for money for vacations, for plastic surgery, for parents of children who have cancer to pay for special gifts for the child, for micro-preemies so their parents can be at the hospital instead of working, etc. Those are just some that I have seen. So when is it ok to set up a GoFundMe account?

IMHO never. I abhor the thought of asking anyone let alone strangers to give me money. What happened to accountability? What happened to paying for things yourself? Yes, you might have to eat at home and not go out every night. Yes, you tighten your belt and get rid of unnecessary expenses. Yes, you eliminate extra Christmas presents.

So you ask why I should care or why am I coming down on maybe some needed recipients? Well, one of the biggest reasons was someone I know. A brother of one of the people I know started a GoFundMe account for his brother and wife and their micro-preemie, supposedly to help pay for medical care and to allow the parents to not work and be with their baby. What the fund did not tell you was that the baby didn't need medical care - the baby was automatically on the state's Public Aid program just because it was born at 22 weeks. The mother ironically works at the hospital where the baby was born and in the NICU where the baby was at. She was allowed to work and be there for her child while being assigned other children. She did not have to take off work. The father had just started his 6th job in just one year. Of course he had to be with the baby, right?

This family that I speak of above raised their family's Christmas present limit from $25.00 to $100.00. In lieu of purchasing presents that are unneeded at that limit why not sponsor a family in need locally. One I know. One picked by qualified social workers as needy. Not someone who is using that collected money for cute outfits for the baby, etc. Also did you realize that the person who starts the account actually controls the account? Do you know how many people who started accounts took the money themselves?

Here is another look at these GoFundMe accounts - people you need to be aware you are probably being duped:
GoFundMe - a great way to scam another

Celebrating 37 years of Marriage

If you’re not happy as a single person, you won’t be happy as a married person. Marriage was not invented as a means of solving all your personal issues. 

I just came across an article that had these lines in it. They are soooooo true. It's funny because in 7th and 8th grade I swore I wanted to be a nun. I was really angry at my parents for not allowing me to enter the noviate for high school. I dated exactly 2 guys in high school. One was clearly in love with another person but was younger than she was. I am glad they finally decided to get together after high school. They had a very happy life together. The other guy I got engaged to. That is until I got the "Dear Jane" letter my senior year 2 weeks before prom. So instead of running away with him and eloping, I went to college. I dated on and off during college but instead of finding the love of my life, I found a lot of friends, some of which were platonic friends for 7 years! 

I was never worried though about meeting the man of my dreams. I was busy. I was going to college full time days graduating with 2 Bachelor degrees and 2 minors while working full time nights at a nursing home, working another nursing home on weekends, worked in the college's cafeteria daily, and cleaned model homes in my spare time. My transition from college to grad school didn't change much except now I was attending grad school in the morning, worked the PM shift as a nurse, and added waitressing on weekends along with getting in grad school working at their hospital too. 

I was a bad date. I would go out with a guy and if he asked for another date, my usual answer was I might be free in a month. No guy wants to hear that and honestly, I didn't care if I saw that guy again or not. I had 3 guys I was super close to as friends (I remember kissing one of them and both of us pulling away saying "YUCK" because it felt like I was kissing my brother). 

I worked in the CCU/ICU unit. One night I called a code and this resident showed up. He stood there like a deer in headlights. I asked him if he could write. I think he said yes. I said good then record what is going on as I am saying it. He asked for paper. I rolled my eyes and said, "See that long strip coming out of the monitor? Write on that at the time I tell you to." I paid him no more attention. I was busy. The doctor finally showed up and I gave him a list of what I had already done and he decided to call the code saying "Time of death 9:08pm". I looked over to the resident who was still standing there with his mouth open. I rolled my eyes and asked him if he recorded everything. He nodded. I said good and he could leave. He actually chose to stay.

We talked after as I was preparing the body for family. He stayed through my writing everything that happened down. I was ready for report so he left. I never got his name but the other 10 residents who would hang out in the unit would stop by and say how much I intimidated him and finally gave me his name. They all thought we would make a good couple. I said I didn't have time and basically he had not left a good impression on me. He started coming to the unit when he was on duty overnight and if I had time, I taught him how all about the monitors, medications, protocols, etc. We had a comfortable mutual respect for each other and our intellect. It was the first time I had met someone I felt was on my level.

3 months later he asked me out. I had just switched hospitals because I had to put in more hours for grad school working specific areas and was working days. I agreed to go to a movie and dinner. I asked him to meet me at my apartment at 5pm. Well, I got there at 5 - there had been 3 codes that day shift and I had done 4 admissions into the ICU. I had been puked on and had blood all over me and basically looked like crap and figured he had long left. I wasn't worried because frankly I was looking forward to taking a shower and going to bed since I had to be back at the hospital in 12 hours. Nope, he was there waiting on me. He took one look at me and said bad day? I said yep. I said I need to take a shower but you can come on up to my apartment. He did. I didn't even stop to think I had 2 cats or know if he was a cat person because my cats were not always friendly. But he got along with them fine. We made the movie but never made dinner. Frankly I fell asleep during the movie (James Bond "The Spy Who Loved Me"). That was September. Our next date was December. Our next date was for the Auto Show in Chicago. We managed to see each other at least 1-2 days a week after and that Christmas, he proposed. 2 years and 2 months from the date we met, we were married.

Overcontrolling Adult Children

We have all heard about parents who over control their children. But rarely have we heard about children who try to control their parents. This post will be about those children.

In my case, everyone already knows I had an alcoholic, emotionally abusing, and emotionally abusing father with a passive agressive mother who passed away in 2010. Basically my father has moved on - new wife - and only accepting 4 of his 6 children into their lives. My baby sister and I were the 2 not chosen but it is something that is not new to either of us. We have lived our whole lives like that. We escaped a controlling father by refusing to be a part of his manipulations.

As we age, we look forward to getting married, having children, having grandchildren. We went out of our way to try and not control our children. We encouraged them to have goals and reach for their goals. We didn't care what they did in life just that they did something. We put no pressure on them. Now I am wondering if that is the wrong approach.

My husband and I are going through a financial crisis right now but that is nothing new in healthcare. He is 65 and I am 62. We both chose being in the medical field and pursued the education to allow us to be in that field. In my husband's case, that meant 4 years of medical school after college, then internship, then residency. We married a year after his residency. The ups and downs of never knowing what your income will be day to day, week to week, month to month is well known in this field unless you are in it for the wrong reasons. We are in it because both of us love being able to help others. We may not run it as much as a business as we should but we are happy.

Son-in-law who never finished college and keeps drifting every few years from job to job but staying in the IT area, just does not understand this mind set. His parents had very steady incomes (father is an accountant and although drifted from job to job, had an income that could be counted on at any time. His mother was a physical therapy aide who never finished college either because she got pregnant with her first child). So son-in-law is child #2 or the first child from that marriage. They had another girl then 10 years later had a change of life boy. That boy was a drug addict and dealer. He ran away at 19 and ended up deceased in a cornfield. There wasn't enough left of him to have answers to any questions if this was accidental or a homicide. They will never know. This boy ran away from home because he was being told what to do and what to be and his last fight was with our son-in-law who pushed his brother to take flight. I think he thought he was taking control of his brother where the child had no control at all from his parents. But it backfired.

Now son-in-law has turned to us and has turned our daughter against us. We paid for daughter's college and 40 thousand dollar wedding. We did it by my taking on billing for a psychotic doctor who I had the pleasure of dumping after I knew all bills had been paid. Husband and I paid for their wedding and college although we strongly feel now like changing our will to deduct what we paid from any inheritance they get and thus giving more to our son who is going out of his way to help. They are also withholding contact with our only grandchild.

Both my husband and I politely talked to daughter and son-in-law and stated they had no right to interfere in our lives just as we have no right to interfere in their lives. It is called mutual respect. But there was to be no more telling us what we should do or not do or how they think our lives should be. That would be no different than us doing it to them. We never have and we do not plan on starting now. But if they ever decide to 'talk' to us again in the same manner, they should expect us to politely hang up the phone as we will not tolerate it at all.

I think we allowed our daughter to have too much control and now the moment she gets upset over anything, it is being picked up by her husband that he has to interfere. All I have to say is good luck.